Tag: journal

friday’s “secret”: “this life right here, right now is beautiful.”

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writing in the night

“This life right here, right now is beautiful.” – Jessica Flannigan

As I am writing this, it is 12:45 AM, on a Thursday morning. Now anyone who knows me well, knows that I value my sleep. I am one of those individuals who needs 9 hours a night. Or should I say, I use to be one of those individuals who needed 9 hours a night. With the arrival of Buddy Man, 7 hours is an absolute luxury!

Sleep often eludes me once I have had to wake up and tend to Buddy Man’s needs; my brain will often go into overdrive thinking of all of things I need to do, worrying about stuff, just refusing to go down again. Buddy Man often follows his pattern of refusing to go down again, which keeps me up even longer.

However, over the past couple of months, instead of fighting valiantly to the bitter end to go back to sleep, which is really nothing but staring at the clock as the minutes tick mercilessly by, I have decided to embrace the solitude and do things that, if attempted during the daylight hours, would be interrupted.

One of my very podcast is The Lively Show and on October 29, Jessica interviewed Jessica Flannigan of Live the Fancy Life. You can listen here. It was a good interview and a lot of things were very helpful to me but the quote that stuck out and that I am trying to remember daily is the quote that I started the post with and bears repeating again:

“This life right here, right now is beautiful.”

Even though my eyes are slightly heavy, and I know I will have a sleep-deprived headache in the morning, my life, “right here, right now is beautiful.” I chose to enjoy that I am able sit in my bed with my Mac Book Pro and write in the stillness of the night. I chose to enjoy this season of life. “Live in each season, as it passes,” said Henry David Thoreau. I chose to enjoy the seasons, as tired as I may be.

enjoy life…

 

friday’s “secret”: to be happy, you gotta step outside of your comfort zone, sometimes

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“Growth itself contains the germ of happiness.” – Pearl S. Buck

Every Friday, OK, most Friday’s, I like to post a “secret” to being happy. Of course, they are not really secrets, at all; they are just things that I have learned over the past few years, that have increased my happiness quotient.

Today’s secret comes from the events of two weeks ago – I gave a presentation, up-front, speaking in public – to about 90 individuals at a weekend-long health and wellness retreat. I have been deathly afraid of public speaking in the past. I think it has something to do with my introverted personality, among other things, and it is not something that I say I enjoy. But I have made a decision to stop letting fear make MOST of my decisions, and so I accepted the engagement.

What I learned from doing it is the most important thing that I take away from the experience.

While I was preparing for it, when I didn’t concentrate on how scared I was and other random emotions, it was exciting. To be sure, there were a few nights when sleep eluded me and I was up at 2 AM working on the presentation, but I decided to embrace those nights of beautiful solitude, as I worked on a topic that I am very passionate about. While I was speaking, it became enjoyable. The audience was kind of enough to listen and be engaged with me and that made things a whole lot easier. Afterwards, peoples’ responses were kind and they seemed receptive to what I had presented. Gretchen Rubin speaks of this phenomenon in her book The Happiness Project. She states, “Many activities that I consider enjoyable are not that much fun while they are happening.”

I was proud of myself for doing something that I don’t normally do and there was a satisfaction in knowing that I had accepted the challenge, prepared, and delivered my best effort. That made me happy.

How about you? Have you found this to be true? Tell me about it.

enjoy life…

october is all about pink

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Picture.Pink 4 TeamML6I’m very excited today because tomorrow, Saturday, October 17th, I’m running in the 12th Annual Liz Hurley Ribbon Run, a 5K created by the Huntsville Hospital Foundation and the Liz Hurley Breast Cancer Fund. The fund was established to create awareness about breast cancer, purchase equipment for breast cancer diagnosis, and provide continuing education for Breast Cancer staff. Liz Hurley, a local news anchor, was diagnosed in 1998 and promptly put a popular face on breast cancer in the Tennessee Valley. So far 3 million dollars has been raised. Check it out here.

This will be my 4th Liz Hurley. I had to skip last year’s due to having a kid two and a half weeks prior to the race. Yep, that’s right. He’s one of the reasons that I disappeared from blogging for a while. And while October is also about his birthday, it is also mostly about pink.

Just like the year before, I am running on Micha Logan’s team, TeamML6. Micha is a former classmate of mine at my alum, Oakwood College (University) that was diagnosed with breast cancer and beat it a few years ago. Having someone that was so close to me in age be diagnosed was yet another confirmation to me that the journey that I had begun to be “comfortable being”, as well as take care of myself was a very necessary journey. Check out Micha’s website and first book, Just for a Season here. She was also featured in this month’s edition of Guidepost Magazine. You can read the article here.

I run for a number of reasons. Running is meditative, therapy, and a spiritual practice, as well as plain old exercise. It’s something that I enjoy immensely and running in the Liz Hurley Ribbon Race on TeamML6 is one of the high points of my year.

What do you do that is a high point of your year? Please comment by clicking on the speech bubble by the title. Can’t wait to see your responses.

enjoy life…